Digital toolbox for journalists

This is an html (raw edit) version of a piece I did for the Press Gazette. I think RSS, del.icio.us, a blog, scribefire and twitter are the key tools here. I'm working on a training course for journalists who want to know how to use these tools effectively. Got anything to add??? drop a comment or email me.

You have a wifi enabled laptop and the latest mobile phone so what else do you need to work as a digital reporter?

Interview recording - The Olympus DS-2 Digital Voice Recorder is highly portable, easy to use and plugs straight into a PC/Mac. It is voice activated and can record up to 22 hours of audio. It costs £97. If you already own an iPod, you could consider buying a Micromemo. It costs around £25 and plugs directly into the base on an iPod or iPod Nano. Audio quality from the built in flexible, detachable microphone is good or you can use another mic. Audacity is free audio editing software that some newspapers, including The Guardian, use to produce podcasts.

Google for grown ups - saving bookmarks with a social bookmarking service like del.icio.us or furl offers two key benefits for journalists. You can use the network functions to link with people who share the same interests and subscribe to particularly good bookmarkers and keyword RSS feeds. Social bookmarking is a fantastic way of sharing research with what is effectively a human search engine.

Browsing - Firefox browser has over 1000 extensions, including note taking tools like Clipmarks and blog writers like ScribeFire. Flock is a flexible alternative that bills itself as the "social web browser" with built in blogging, social bookmarking and photo sharing. Google's not the only search engine. Alltheweb is highly customisable and offers live search.

News - RSS feeds deliver the news to you as it is published. Download an RSS newsreader, like Vienna or Snarfware, and subscribe to newspapers, blogs and more. Bloglines and Google Reader are two excellent online alternatives. But, don't stop there. Subscribe to RSS feeds from keyword searches on blog search engine sites such as Technorati and Google Blog Search. Netvibes is a useful tool that brings all this information, email and more onto one web page, although it can take time to configure.

Multimedia - whether it be for research or the printed page, photo sharing sites like Flickr and BubbleshareYouTube, Blip.tv and Vimeo do the same for video footage. Some travel journalists are now in the habit of uploading short video snippets to aid the memory and writing process. Free software like Shozu lets you upload pictures and video from your mobile phone to photo and video sharing websites or a blog automatically. For the sound and vision mashers of the mulitmedia newsroom the £20 Soundslides download is the weapon of choice. offer an easy way to store images either publicly or privately.

Google it - Google offers a wide range of reliable services to help keep you organised. Gmail has a massive 1GB of email storage and integrates well with offline email readers and address books. With Google documents you can write and store features online and work collaboratively. Google calendar is a shareable calendar. Google Notebook helps you store clippings of text, images and links from web pages. Use Google Alerts to find out when a new news item or web page with a keyword or topic you are interested in is published.

It's your call - Skype, Google Talk and Gizmo are three of the most popular internet telephony tools. Computer to computer calls are free. Calls to fixed lines or mobiles are relatively cheap. However, sound quality and connection reliability are patchy. Gizmo is currently the most flexible. It offers free calls to other Gizmo users, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, or Windows Live users. Cheap add-ons allow you to make and receive calls from any mobile phone or landline. Gizmo is the only one to offer call recording as an integrated part of the software.

Contacts - It is possible to sync contacts stored in your computer address book with most mobile phones, other computers and web email services like Gmail and Yahoo! This offers added security if your computer and/or your phone are lost or broken. Services such as Linked in offer far more in depth ways of storing and sharing your contacts.

Blogs - Blogger is a popular free service provided by Google. Typepad is a low cost, professional service while Wordpress and Movable Type are for the more technically minded. Windows Live Writer is downloadable blog writing software that links into Windows Live Spaces. Some journalists use a blog to simply store published articles.

Never forget - Remember the milk is a "task manager" It will help you remember anything, so long as you remember to tell it to remember.

Comments

[ourman]

Great resource - never used Scribefire so I am off to check that out.

Added the whole thing to my del.icio.us

One thing - just switched recently to Wordpress - and would argue that it is not for the more technically minded at all. It's at least as simple as Typepad. Arguably more simple.

[Graham]

Yeah - I've heard of a few people switching over. I guess it's moved on a bit. Have you shipped over your old blogs? Do you have big spam troubles? Is it cheaper?

[Graham]

Oh, another I would add as I use it pretty much every day is http://co.mments.com/

[ourman]

Nope old blogs can stay where they are.

Is it cheaper - yeah. I paid a bit to get a domain through them and domain mapping is as easy as ticking a box - so that was good.

Also paid a little more so I could tinker with the html - not that I can do much with it.

We'll see how it worked out. Typepad is expensive.

Spam troubles - well there is a spam filter. So far it has only filtered out two legitimate comments - but I caught them.